So as America is circling the drain (as George Carlin put it) what the fuck is a post truth era? Michael Hayden is saying it's when political beliefs based on lies are so strong that facts can't dislodge them. How do we get out before the CIA starts spraying airborne ebola?

Just get out. There are plenty of places to go. Gather your tribe and plan.

------------------
One Hundred.

-------------------------------
If life is stupendous one cannot also demand that it should be easy. - Robert Musil

my daughter is graduating in 3 weeks...and i'm feeling free to move the fk out... shes goin to UCLA..so i can come back to cali and visit if she isnt coming with me...shes been in London all week playing with LA Philharmonic and some London orchestra..and she loves it...she says she might want to move over there....someone tell me why i dont want to move to UK? i live in LA right now...is it more expensive?

---------------------------------

So i'm smokin on this cactus, bangin Fat Patrick
hustla til i die baby grindin like a savage
pimp game sweet, breakin ankles and feet
cuz these hoes break they toes til they job complete

H-Town made L.A. paid

>over there....someone tell me why i dont want to move to UK? i
>live in LA right now...is it more expensive?

London (I live there for 5 years) is expensive af if you want to live in the center of town, what most people do is live farther out, and young people just do the roommate thing. Transportation is decent but like any huge city still unreliable.

However with Brexit the economy is in real trouble in the coming years and real estate in London has already been slumping, which could be the one silver lining. Some cool cities in the rest of the country but London is unparalleled in terms of diversity, culture, etc. And you get used to the on/off rain lol. Sometimes I miss the casual pub sessions with coworkers on Thursday/Friday. IMO if you get into local culture it can be fun, though FWIW by many aspects London is more international than British.

------------------------------
For the record, my teams:
MLB: Mets / Soccer: PSG
NCAA BB: Arizona / NCAA FB: Michigan
NBA: Spurs / NFL: Jets

Where to relocate depends on a lot of different factors and I do not know you so it's hard to say what would fit your lifestyle and deliver what you're looking for.

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

is what i'm looking at long term for lower costs, stability and higher quality of life - costa rica's eastern coast, west or east coast of mexico...would love to go to cuba if it moved way in the direction of vietnam but the US is still trying to crush their people and holding up normalization. plaza / public square type cities near the water.
also philippines, spain.

i'm asking oneself if i can stand the kind of plummeting quality of personal and community life, especially as you get older, is tolerable. people are completely kicked disposable and kicked to the curb in the US system. i think pockets of the country will always be somewhat sane and desirable but untethered in my early 40s has me traveling a lot to see what i could go with.

Long Beach is getting worse by the day.

I've been looking at Wyoming.

IG: amadu_me

"...Whateva, man..." (c) Redman

Colombia
Brazil
Thailand
Rwanda
Ethiopia
Cambodia

and where to go. my tribe is really feeling it this week. my friends coincidentally and simultaneously calling are each other to discuss what the deal is on making moves. the hive mind is working i guess.

------------------
One Hundred.

>what the fuck is a post truth era? Michael Hayden is saying
>it's when political beliefs based on lies are so strong that
>facts can't dislodge them.

and he is complicit in creating it, so fuck that dude.

___________________

Mar-A-Lago delenda est

If we hadn't already been living in a post-truth era for decades now, that guy would be rotting in some cartoonish underwater prison for evil supervillains.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

Ex- Unbelievably, this "American moors"/ blacks= indigenous Americans movement is spreading more and more (online)

apparently Based on nothing but social media memes and YouTube scholars. And folks' shame
regarding slavery/ Africa



Not to make yet another kanye post, but this week exposed how many ppl have no understanding of simple simple simple facts & history

Stay woke??

)))--####---###--(((

bunda
<-.-> ^_^ \^0^/
get busy living, or get busy dying.

>
>Stay woke??

You dont think everything is an extreme over-correction? In other words we KNOW that there have been lies told in history, information omitted etc...

So now in a Youtube info war era... the most ridiculous COULD be true because they lied to us FAM

I've had a 26 yr old tell me he doesn't believe in HISTORY at all. Unless he sees it. Flat earther that we TOOK TO NASA in Houston.. Got to watch sunset from the ISS at mission control... Still nah

I've had people tell me evolution is a white mans lie because if evolution is true then black people are closer to monkeys so.. WHITE MANS LIE

Double 0
DJ/Producer/Artist
Producer in Kidz In The Hall
-------------------------------------------
twitter: @godouble0
IG: @godouble0
www.thinklikearapper.com

>I've had a 26 yr old tell me he doesn't believe in HISTORY at
>all. Unless he sees it. Flat earther that we TOOK TO NASA in
>Houston.. Got to watch sunset from the ISS at mission
>control... Still nah


A cat I went to HS with ( one of the best in the state, nationally ranked), argued a bunch of us down on that flat earth shit. His closing argument was a combination of "Disney owns the CIA" and "NASA hires animators not scientists". At that point I decided that my friendship with him wasn't that valuable.

___________

Back again for the first time.

Yea when I was arguing with homey about evolution (mind you he is mid 40s)

I was just like....

ya know.. this dude still in the hood... whether he believes in evolution or a round earth actually doesn't matter to his everyday life..

Double 0
DJ/Producer/Artist
Producer in Kidz In The Hall
-------------------------------------------
twitter: @godouble0
IG: @godouble0
www.thinklikearapper.com

Whites and Asians are the highest evolved humans yet have the most neanderthal DNA gtfoh

______________________________________

Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days

It's sad how quickly this ignorance is spreading and if you don't know, the Native Americans are confronting the spread of this "we were here before slavery" myth.

Irony and satire have taken over American discourse because our leaders are so appalingly corrupt. I get it. This is them detaching from the truth that comedians provide in analyzing the absurd through irony and satire. This is them absorbing the post-truth era that Hayden is talking about.

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-snapchat-and-the-dawn-of-the-post-truth-era/
For those not into artsy film, Rashomon was a 1950 Akira Kurosawa movie whose narrative premise is showing the same criminal act—a murder in a forest—from four contradictory points of view that cast doubt on any underlying reality.

Let’s take a very real and recent criminal act as an example: the Santa Fe, Texas, school shooting. The anti-gun left sees the event as yet more evidence of the need for stronger gun-control legislation. The pro-gun right sees the exact same event as evidence of the contrary, of the utter futility of gun laws in preventing such tragedies. Same crime, same event, but they occupy completely different mental realities that are irreconcilable in practice. Pick any polarizing event on a hot-button issue and you’ll see the same divergent takes on a single event, two incommensurate sets of tribal values that live in distinct ideological worlds yet cohabit the same legacy polity. It’s this Rashomon reality that disallows even the rudiments of the rational discourse required of democracy or science, and which will spell the end of the intellectual experiment that started with a Mainz printer in the late 15th century.

So what will happen?

The post-internet generation, weaned almost since birth on touchscreens and fractious digital media, navigates this raucous world with an equanimity that we dinosaurs beholden to a dead-tree age find impossible to muster. It is a different world, one where the universally acclaimed expert or editor has been replaced by internet-enabled rumor and hearsay arbitrated only by algorithms. There are some dominant media outlets with a claim to primacy, just as every village has a particularly well-informed local gossip, but the capital-T Truth, so beloved by the French encyclopedists, will no longer exist across a broad spectrum of society.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/05/556472-post-truth-era-leaders-must-defend-objective-independent-media-un-says-press

In 'post truth' era, leaders must defend objective, independent media, UN says on Press Freedom Day

Journalists wait for the arrival of official delegations at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, in Montreux, Switzerland.UN Photo/Violaine Martin
Journalists wait for the arrival of official delegations at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, in Montreux, Switzerland.

3 May 2017
In a “post-truth” world with “fake news” on the rise, and media accountability and credibility falling under question, free, independent and professional journalism has never been more important, the United Nations today said.

In a “post-truth” world with “fake news” on the rise, and media accountability and credibility falling under question, free, independent and professional journalism has never been more important, the United Nations today said.

“We need leaders to defend a free media. This is crucial to counter prevailing misinformation. And we need everyone to stand for our right to truth,” Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message to mark World Press Freedom Day.

This year's theme highlights media's role in advancing peaceful, just and inclusive societies and builds on the theme 'Critical Minds for Critical Times.'

The 2017 commemoration comes at a time when “free, independent and pluralistic media has never been so important to empower individual women and men, strengthen good governance and the rule of law, and take forward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural (UNESCO) said in a statement.

The agency is also tasked with defending press freedom and the safety of journalists, and is spearheading the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.

“Far too often, murder remains the most tragic form of censorship,” UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in her message on the Day, noting that 102 journalists were killed in 2016.

She noted that “facing a crisis of audience identity, journalism stands before a horizon where old challenges are merging with new threats,” which include the Internet's blurring of the lines between advertising and editorial material, businesses pushing for profits and private censorship.

RELATED: UNESCO award for Dawit Isaak 'sign of hope' to free imprisoned Eritrean journalist

In her message, Ms. Bokova cited Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist assassinated in 1986, whose name was lent to the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. He wrote: “Only the independence, the character, the objectivity and the good judgment of the journalist and the media can overcome the terrible storms of the new world that threaten freedom of information everywhere.”

Ms. Bokova noted those words, written two years prior to his death, “continue to resonate today, 33 years later.”

She called for “original, critical and well-researched journalism, guided by high professional, ethical standards and a quality media education” and for audiences who “have the right media and information literacy skills.”

Naame's comment: I fear for my community even more now. First, the article Ramos was mad about was basically a timeline of events with quotes from the victim of Ramos's harrassment. There was nothing more to it, yet he felt that he was defamed by this. Trump also has an affinity for feeling defamed by newspapers that just give a timeline of his behavior and record his statements. Second, the facial recognition tech used to identify Ramos was first used on antiwar protesters here in Maryland. Do you think there will be facial recognition technology used to identify the people at tonight's vigil for the newspaper? You're damn right there will be. Thirdly is the rage. We need to address the rage and anger that is palpable within a segment of people in this country. There needs to be a campaign for people to address the rage, a campaign of atonement and forgiveness.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/06/29/the-capital-gazette-shooting-was-about-newspapers/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9a08cca69b33

"It’s the sort of rage that puts you at a loss when you work for a newspaper, where you see people trying, every day, to get it right because they believe in how much getting it right matters for a better country made up of better citizens. It’s enough even to glance at the headlines of Capital Gazette stories: “Helping the homeless one bag at a time in a Hanover classroom,” “Annapolis City Council apologizes for historic lynchings,” “Six things we learned from Anne Arundel’s primary.” This paper was providing its community with what all newspapers try to provide, in aggregate, for the nation.

The question, of course, is what to do now. There’s no road map to shoring up trust in the journalistic enterprise; there’s no manifesto that will change the minds of a citizenry that seems to exist in a series of separate realities. There are only people to talk to and stories to write and pages to set and presses to print them. All you can do, really, is what the Capital Gazette does every day, and what it did today, despite everything: You put out a paper."

civilized folk. Civilized folk(Africana) tried civility for x-amount of centuries and it ain't work(c)Capitalism(veritable economic darwinism)....so it come a time when a ninja gotta cold *gangsta dat shit! We at dat tippin point where we civilized-folk(Africana/Native Americana) gotta either gangsta dat shit,.....Fight, ....or dip out!


No other options.

Regardless, I've pledged my life to the will of #DiasporicPanAfricana

https://chriswind.bandcamp.com/track/massage

"You can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the African"
Afro-Americana/Afro-Caribbana/Afro-Latino unite. We are ALL Black!

again

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/31/facebook-says-it-has-uncovered-coordinated-disinformation-operation-ahead-midterm-elections/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3ec0a8246bc1

Facebook said it discovered 32 false pages and profiles that were created between March 2017 and this May, which lured 290,000 people with ads, events and regular posts on topics such as race, fascism and feminism — and sought to stir opposition to President Trump. The company informed law enforcement before it deleted the profiles Tuesday morning. It also notified lawmakers of the activity this week, and said it would notify the real Facebook users who were swept up in the operation.

One of the most popular pages had links to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Kremlin-backed organization of Russian operatives that flooded Facebook with disinformation around the 2016 election, Facebook said. Yet the operators of the newly banned pages, whom Facebook said it was not in a position to identify, were more clever about covering their tracks. Lawmakers and experts were quick to attribute the activity to Russia.



The disclosure — the first admission of coordinated disinformation on Facebook that could affect the November election — is a sign that manipulation continues to be an active problem for Facebook and its billions of users, even after the company has spent heavily to prevent it. It also raised questions about whether other technology companies are still being used as conduits for disinformation, as Google, Twitter and others were around the last election.

Google didn’t respond to queries about whether it has observed any new coordinated disinformation. Twitter declined to comment.

Both Facebook and disinformation operators have become more savvy in the last year, since the company trickled out information about the IRA activity. Facebook, which detected the most recent pages through manual investigations, artificial intelligence and leads from law enforcement, has taken a more aggressive approach to rooting out and disclosing political abuse.

Underlying all of these tools is a technology with the potential to super-charge them: artificial intelligence. As AI is increasingly woven into the consumer-facing web, more and more content will be curated and presented by a machine. Should disinformation propagators harness AI, they will mar and adulterate our political culture and discourse with super-human power. Early versions of web-based AI technology already help create digital filter bubbles, escalate nonveracious content to the top of search results and power viral online hoaxes and noxious hate speech. To counter these trends, the companies try to feed the algorithms with instructions to spot and limit negative content. For example, services like YouTube continue to onboard more and more human reviewers to help identify, label and curate policy-violating content including extremist videos. But the scale of content is simply too large for comprehensive human review, and the vast majority of disinformation would not be taken down anyway because it is perfectly legal despite poisoning to our politics. We will not delete our way out of this problem.

http://time.com/5112847/facebook-fake-news-unstoppable/

Funny this lack of reliable information and honest discussion is definitely one of the reasons I have come back to OKP and feel some sort of comfort and familiarity after being on FB, IG, and twitter. There is still a sense of anonymity and community at the same time with a group of moderators that operate from a Black (and decidedly male) perspective. The gender warz on OKP used to provide daily hilarity and these same debates have gone to Twitter. The political debates were a lot more interesting when the black republican, M2, would go to battle with K_orr and various other commenters. It was as though we were operating with the same facts but from different perspectives. Now its hard to even engage a republican online because they don't even believe facts are real.

I also don't get the sense of sinister ulterior motives behind the site's boards unlike the boards of reddit and other sites. I honestly had no idea what a reddit was until 2015 and I still don't interact with the site because it's interface is mad annoying.

I use reddit as a reference to occasionally test the depth of the rabbit hole.

------------------
One Hundred.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-hidden-suffering-behind-the-brazilian-coffee-that-jump-starts-american-mornings/2018/08/30/e5e5a59a-8ad4-11e8-9d59-dccc2c0cabcf_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.05bfa0611d57

But a stagnant economy and tighter budgets have hampered the country’s fight against such abuses. Mistreated workers are now turning to the international community for help.

Dozens of victims of degrading labor conditions at coffee farms formally accused McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Nestlé in late August of failing to ensure that their coffee is sourced from Brazilian farms that are free of slave labor.

In a complaint to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a group of 36 countries that promotes global trade — the workers accused the companies of lax oversight of their supply chains in violation of the organization’s binding human rights and sustainability guidelines, which Brazil has signed.

This country man. Ready to make that JA move as soon as I'm able.

************************************************************

Nigga, if the shoe fits, then buy the matching purse!" Rass Kass

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-facts-must-matter-on-the-trouble-with-reality/#!

JUNE 3, 2017

ON THE MORNING of November 9, 2016, the day after Donald Trump’s victory, hosts Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield and executive producer Katya Rogers talked about the future of their radio program, On the Media. “This is about the American experiment and whether it fails,” Gladstone said.

Her new book, The Trouble with Reality, can be seen as a means of preventing that failure from happening, through a look backward at how Trump’s rise was partly due to the press coverage that helped him even as it criticized him.

Gladstone stays away from the debates that have filled column inches since November, like what role sexism, racism, and economic anxiety played, and instead digs for something more fundamental and inextricable from our society: the nature of our reality. Or, more accurately: Realities. In the book, Gladstone writes,

Part of the problem stems from the fact that facts, even a lot of facts, do not constitute reality. Reality is what forms after we filter, arrange, and prioritize those facts and marinate them in our values and traditions. Reality is personal.

Filtered reality is troubling for a democracy, particularly when coupled with arrogance and an unwillingness to listen. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Even if citizens are willing to admit large gaps in their knowledge, it doesn’t get them far. They’ll still only know what they know. So, as Gladstone says, “we have to live somewhere. So we construct cozier, more comprehensible versions , move in and hunker down.”

This is compounded because, according to research, voters who supported the losing candidate are vulnerable to believing in conspiracy theories. This helps to explain the rampant and racist birtherism that plagued President Barack Obama’s two terms. It also explains, now, the way that many liberals have latched on to conspiracy theories stemming from the Trump team’s documented — though still hazy — involvement with Russia. “It aligns with the liberal code: It is impossible that one such as Trump could arise spontaneously in our exemplary democracy. His victory required Vladimir Putin,” Gladstone writes.

This is demonstrated day in and out on Twitter, where many liberal figures have embraced Eric Garland, a “strategic intelligence analyst,” according to his Twitter bio, who gained prominence with an unreadable 120-tweet thread using “game theory” to prove conspiracy theories about Russia. It was nonsense, but somehow garnered praise from Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery, who said: “single greatest thread I have ever read on Twitter. And in its way a Federalist Paper for 2016.”

There are counterforces. In many ways, the Trump administration has helped to relieve the press of what Gladstone sees as their most pernicious and harmful bias: access bias. In the book, Gladstone explains,

Traditionally, reporters cultivate powerful White House sources whom they can call when they need a quote. But if those sources are upset by something the reporters write, they won’t pick up the phone. The reporters must have those quotes, no matter how bland and predictable, to finish their stories; so to keep the quotes coming, they may leave out some juicy facts. For the public, this is a terrible deal.

Now, Gladstone argues, because so many of the official statements from the administration are false or contradictory, they’ve lost much of their meaning, which means reporters will want them less, which means losing access is not something they need to fear. This has already been demonstrated in a handful of isolated incidents, like the shunning of Kellyanne Conway by CNN’s State of the Union and other similar programs because of her consistent unreliability.

That is good, for now. There is no reason to think that this will continue into another administration, presuming we do not end up with one that lies as boldly as this. In the meantime and in the future, we will have to confront other problems more intrinsic to human nature. One example: In a 2006 study, Emory University professor Drew Westen found that people had no problem accepting that the candidate they opposed was hypocritical but had significant problems accepting that the candidate they supported was also hypocritical. Brain scans showed that participants reacted as though they were facing a threat and looked for a way out. When they found one, their brain reacted in the same way addicts’ brains do when they get their fix.

The question then becomes: How do we do the opposite of what we are hardwired to do? Gladstone suggests having the “patience to defer judgment” in myriad contexts. Remaining open to new information requires not investing too much in one candidate. But in a two-party system such as ours, this seems to have more of a theoretical value than a practical one.

Gladstone’s ending advice — outside of protesting and organizing and calling representatives — is nearly the same as where she began, and nearly the same as most mainstream pundits. It is important to get out of cozy, convenient worlds. Still, it is only nearly the same, as Gladstone makes room for what others don’t: somebody has to be right. She writes,

If two rational people, after pooling and verifying each other’s evidence, would come to the same conclusions, right? They would revise their views to fit the facts. But there are never two rational people. There is only one. And it is me. My facts are correct.

If you think I am cracking wise to make a point, you are mistaken. I am sincere. My facts reflect the world as it is. Donald Trump’s facts, as a rule, do not. I do not know the facts of his supporters, not really. I only know they voted for Trump, which is inconceivable to me. Which is to say, I can not conceive of it. And maybe this is a place to begin the reckoning.

The distances between the realities of people living in the United States of America have been widening for a long time, perhaps since Fox News launched in 1996, or since President Bill Clinton signed welfare reforms into law, or since candidate Ronald Reagan’s southern strategy, or since CNN’s launch in 1980, or since candidate Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, or perhaps always.

Gladstone’s confidence that the facts will eventually assert themselves is galvanizing, but the book can’t tell us when, or how, or why. Still, her case that our realities need to be closer together is unassailable, and making the invisible visible is a good place to start.

¤

Bradley Babendir is a fiction writer and critic. He currently lives in Boston, where he is the editor-in-chief of Redivider.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/20/2020-candidates-social-media-attack-1176018

Amarnath Gupta, a research scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego who monitors social media activity, said he’s also seen a recent surge in Twitter activity negatively targeting three candidates — O’Rourke, Harris and Warren.

That increased activity includes a rise in the sheer volume of tweets, the rate at which they are being posted and the appearance of “cluster behavior” tied to the three candidates.

“I can say that from a very, very cursory look, a lot of the information is negatively biased with respect to sentiment analysis,” said Gupta, who partnered with Guardians.ai on a 2018 study.

According to the Guardians.ai analysis, Harris attracted the most overall Twitter activity among the 2020 candidates it looked at, with more than 2.5 million mentions over the 30-day period.

She was also among the most targeted. One widely seen tweet employed racist and sexist stereotypes in an attempt to sensationalize Harris’ relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. That tweet — and subsequent retweets and mentions tied to it — made 8.6 million “potential impressions” online, according to Guardians.ai, an upper limit calculation of the number of people who might have seen it based on the accounts the cluster follows, who follows accounts within the cluster and who has engaged with the tweet.

Another racially charged tweet was directed at O’Rourke. The Twitter profile of the user where it originated indicates the account was created in May 2018, but it had authored just one tweet since then — in January, when the account announced it had breaking news about the former Texas congressman leaving a message using racist language on an answering machine in the 1990s. That tweet garnered 1.3 million potential impressions on the platform, according to Guardians.ai.
America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90487288/how-steak-umm-yes-that-steak-umm-became-a-voice-of-reason-in-the-pandemic?partner=rss

04-07-20
How Steak-Umm—yes, that Steak-Umm—became a voice of reason in the pandemic

The voices behind the frozen meat sheets brand discuss responsible media consumption and the analysis of good data in a crisis. Seriously.
BY JEFF BEER 5 MINUTE READ

When a crisis hits, people look to a variety of sources for reassurance, advice, calm, and inspiration. These typically include a mix of family, friends, government officials, law enforcement, experts in a given field, clergy, and other figures of authority. Rarely, if ever, has this list included frozen processed meat sheets.

That changed Monday night after a Steak-Umm Twitter thread that offered a sobering string of advice on media literacy, disinformation, and staying informed amid the pandemic.

“It was more just a cumulative effect of me having a job to spend every moment on social, seeing a constant flow of information, and a lot of it wasn’t good information,” says Nathan Allebach of the agency Allebach Communications, who has been the human behind Steak-Umm’s social media since 2015. Despite the thread being posted at 10 p.m., Allebach says it wasn’t prompted by a specific moment or piece of news. “I know we’re in this state of panic, and heightened cultural anxiety, so people aren’t at their best all the time, thinking about where they’re getting their information.”


Steak-umm
✔
@steak_umm
friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. (good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization outliers attempting to counter global consensus around this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. breaking news stories that only relay initial findings of an event are not collecting data. we have to be careful in our media consumption

it can be difficult to know what to believe in a time when institutional trust is diminished and the gatekeepers of information have been dismantled, but it's more crucial now than ever before to follow a range of credentialed sources for both breaking news and data collection all we currently have are limited and evolving metrics that experts are deciphering and acting upon immediately to the best of their ability. this terrain leaves many openings for opportunists and charismatic manipulators to lead people astray by exploiting what they want to hear

breaking news and storytelling will always be spun with interpretive bias from different media perspectives, but data is a science that can't be replaced by one-off anecdotes. try to remember this to avoid fear-based sensationalism or conspiracy theories taking over your mind you can maintain independent, critical thinking toward institutions without dipping into fringe conspiracies that get jumpstarted by individual anecdotes being virally spread as data. it's not easy, but it's necessary to keep any semblance of responsible online information flow

we're a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony, but hey we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don't let anecdotes dictate your worldview ok

steak-umm bless

we're a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony, but hey we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don't let anecdotes dictate your worldview ok

steak-umm bless

if you thought this thread was useful, we posted another one recently touching on small, simple ways that the average person can take on the daily cultural challenges of this pandemic without demonizing or otherizing our neighbors https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status/1245877088701353984?s=21 … https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status/1245877088701353984 …

here are some thoughts on how we can come together amidst this pandemic and economic crisis, despite the challenges of misinformation, media inundation, partisanship, and cultural polarization. /THREAD

The reaction since Monday night’s tweetstorm has been a mix of gratitude and surprise. Collectively, we’re appreciating the message and bemused by the messenger.

It’s not the first time that Steak-Umm has gone viral for taking its Twitter account beyond the typical purview of goofy marketing. Back in 2018, another thread gained widespread attention for how it addressed social isolation, student loan debt, and generational angst associated with a lack of job opportunity, and a cultural obsession with repackaging of nostalgia into cynical products.

Whether or not you take comfort in the fact that a brand can offer high-quality analysis and advice on a serious topic, the more people with audiences encouraging the spread of true, scientific data can only be a good thing.

Coca-Cola has caught on, taking a page from the Steak-Umm playbook and tweeting out Tuesday morning, “Our Twitter is going to look a little different as we donate our social feeds to experts and partners sharing helpful information. Stay tuned for messages making a difference.”


Jeffrey Wright✔ @jfreewright
Steak-umm became Presidential yesterday and got damnit, I missed the whole inauguration ceremony.
Umm...read all of this.👇🏾 https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status/1247343900475490304 …

Steak-Umm’s social voice and tone for the past few weeks has managed to balance acknowledging the unique circumstances of the pandemic while also maintaining its long-established sense of humor. Monday night’s thread was the second in as many weeks to earnestly address a broader, non-frozen beef topic, namely “the challenges of misinformation, media inundation, partisanship, and cultural polarization.”

“A lot of what we’ve been thinking and talking about, in terms of how to present Steak-Umm on social right now, is around how we can add valuable content to people who are in need, in some way, shape, or form,” says Allebach. “It’s a weird situation for brands to be in right now, to not be overtly advertising their products, while also trying to add PSAs, but not wanting to be bland about it. It’s just been a process of seeing where the country and the world is at and trying to see if we can interject some thoughtful commentary into the mix.”

The response so far has been enthusiastic from across the cultural spectrum, including libraries, scientists, journalists, actors, VC investors, and state Supreme Court justices.

Allebach says he thinks it caught on for the same reason that the thread about young people in 2018 did. “There are two levels to it: One is we’re trying to create thoughtful, thought-provoking messages that get people from across the political and cultural spectrum to reevaluate their own biases, with a bit of a slap in the face on your timeline,” he says. “Then there’s the deeper, ironic level of the brand itself, that the message is coming from a frozen meat company.”


Soledad O'Brien✔ @soledadobrien
I just started following the people who make hot pockets because their advice on how to sift through misinformation during a pandemic is really good. @steak_umm. I know. Weird, right?
2,755 7:01 AM - Apr 7, 2020

If anything, that’s the one unifying sentiment. “Looking at all the responses, the overwhelming rhetoric being tied to this is, What kind of a world are we living in where frozen beef is making this much sense?” says Allebach. “It’s the absurdity of a frozen meat company being the messenger here.”

Of course it’s absurd, but one of the reasons it has not been immediately dismissed is the consistency in voice that Allebach has established for the brand over the years. Right now, Steak-Umm is looking for more ways to amplify some of that good data it’s tweeting about and use its reach to shine a spotlight on those helping the most. The brand’s account director at Allebach, Jesse Bender, says they’re listening and engaging more, as opposed to throwing out memes. “We’re looking for people who are impacting others in this crisis and trying to amplify and help them in their own community,” says Bender. “That’s a new initiative for us, trying to help the people who are helping people.”


Chris Sacca✔ @sacca
Preach! https://twitter.com/steak_umm/status/1247343900475490304 …

Allebach says that’s about finding a meaningful role in this unprecedented situation.

“Right now we’re just trying to listen and to insert thoughtful dialogue into the online discourse, trying to find opportunities and people we could be helping, while also encouraging people who already follow our brand to play their part in helping,” he says. “We’re going to play our role as best we can, and try to encourage others to do the same.”


Steak-umm✔ @steak_umm
you are not alone

a sentient frozen meat brand on twitter is with you
8:37 AM - Apr 6, 2020
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Beer is a staff editor at Fast Company, covering advertising, marketing, and brand creativity. He lives in Toronto. More
America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

dummies.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

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